While the goods and services tax (GST) and high interest rates have
dealt blows to a number of retail and service industries, the
residential construction sector has also had to deal with the added
impact of changes to the province's building code.

Andreas Petersen, manager of Petersen's Building Supplies in
Thunder Bay, notes that the switch from the manufacturer's tax to
the GST has resulted in a 20- to 30-per-cent drop in the price of some
products, but that a number of factors have stifled any potential
increase in sales.

Among the factors were the late spring in northwestern Ontario and
changes to insulation requirements contained in the building code which
came into affect on Jan. 1.

In Sudbury Bernie Frasen, director of the region's building
controls office, said much confusion has resulted from the changes.

Most of the changes to R-value requirements occurred in Zone-2,
which encompasses most of Northern Ontario. The change which caused the
most problems affected insulation requirements for exterior walls of new
homes.

Frasen said the insulation required by the building code jumped a
total of two R-values in some instances (from R-20 to R-22).

"The problem was that manufactured batts didn't provide
the required insulation," he said during a telephone interview.
"The manufacturers had to go back to their workstations to make
sure the batts complied with the regulations."

Frasen added that the problems have been gradually corrected since
the beginning of the year and that insulation manufacturers have
re-invented their products.

"The problem in Northern Ontario is that none of the
manufacturers were making an R-22 batt," said Grant McDiarmaid,
marketing manager, home building for Fiberglass Canada Inc.

McDiarmaid pointed out that his company has since developed a
5.5-inch batt with the necessary R-value.

"It wasn't a big deal. It was just a matter of changing
the density," he said, adding that company officials had been
working on the product since the changes to the building code were
proposed.

"We weren't surprised by them," McDiarmaid said.

The new product in not only denser than R-20 batts, but it also
contains more glass and is narrower and thinner, making it better suited
to two-by-six wall construction.

Ralph DiGaetano, a code development officer with the Ministry of
Housing in Toronto, noted that the changes in insulation requirements
were contained in a proposal made by the Ministry of Energy in 1988 and
were finally adopted last October.

The lengthy approval process included reviews by the Ministry of
Housing's code committee, the construction industry and insulation
manufacturers. By DiGaetano's estimation, more than 1,800 people
were involved in the process.

He said that, in most cases, contractors can easily compensate for
the change.

"We didn't require any new type of insulation. They
(contractors) can get by with fiberglas clad R-7 sheathing or by using
two-by-six construction with five-and-half inches of batting,"
DiGaetano said. "There are several ways of doing it."

COPYRIGHT 1991 Laurentian Business Publishing, Inc.
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